Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Week Two of Laura's Training

This past week brought some nice weather out on Mt. Rainier, so I decided to go for a ski tour. I wanted to go up to Camp Muir to get 4,600 ft of elevation gain. I loaded up the pack with a fair bit of weight (around 40lbs) to practice carrying a larger load than a normal trip to Muir for an extended period of time. I figured that I would try to keep an average pace (up to Muir in less than 4 hours) with that amount of weight. Since I wanted to have a fun ski down with less than 40lbs on my back, to create the weight to carry I put a couple garbage bags filled with snow into the bottom of the pack. This way, when I got up to Muir I could quickly shed the majority of the weight that I carried uphill and have a more lightweight ski down without leaving anything up on the mountain. I also figured this would be nice in the event of bad whether or needing to suddenly shed weight to get up more quickly, I could if necessary. This worked out well with no leaking from the big snowball in my bag.

I also got some yoga in a couple times this week. Yesterday, I went to the gym for some time on the elliptical. I put 50lbs in the pack, tossed in a DVD and used the elliptical on high resistance. This was obviously fairly slow moving but got the legs and hips feeling the workout. I also did an abdominal routine as well as various weight exercises. I finished off the time at the gym with an additional bit on the elliptical. More to come later!

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